Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Best Friends Book Club: The Divergent Trilogy

Let me start off with a little bit about my best friend Christy. We've been friends since we were 6 years old -- that's more than two decades! To think about it that way, we sometimes feel kinda old, but it really is pretty incredible to be friends with someone for almost your entire life. We went to school together for K-8th grade, but then went to different high schools and colleges and now live three hours away from each other :( Though it would be nice to live closer, we crack ourselves up on a regular basis that despite the distance we still "share a brain." We'll meet up somewhere and show up wearing nearly identical outfits. She'll recommend a recipe to me only to discover I've already made it. We're writing these posts separately, but I wouldn't be one bit surprised if we end up saying some of the same things.

We also tend to read a lot of the same books (though she reads waaaaay faster than I do -- jealous!), but not always around the same time. Since we happened to read Divergent within days of each other, we thought we would team up and review them at the same time. It was so much fun to message each other and discuss our likes (Four!) and dislikes (all the lies!) and comment on all the crazy twists and turns with the books so fresh in both of our minds. So without further ado, I give you the first edition of our Best Friends Book Club. Make sure to check out her review over on To Do: Life!

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**WARNING** I've tried very hard to avoid spoilers, but my hinting and vague descriptions *might* give something away if you haven't read the whole series yet. You may want to proceed with caution, especially when it comes to my Allegiant review.

Divergent
Series? yes; Divergent #1
Publisher: Katherine Tegan Books
Date: April 2011
How did I get this book? purchased
My Rating: 4 of 5 stars
GoodReads | Author | Publisher

I found this one a bit slow-going at first, but about halfway through it really started grabbing me and I flew through the rest, eager to find out what would happen next. So many things to love about this book:

  • The concept of a society divided by different virtues which is very thought-provoking and bound to lead to conflict.
  • The idea of rebelling against being just one thing for the rest of your life. 
  • How the characters are faced with really hard decisions and situations and have to live with the consequences. 
  • Tris and Four and their mix of both strength and vulnerability. 
  • The fact that it's not always him saving her, but she saves him sometimes, too. 
  • No love triangle!

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Insurgent
Series? yes; Divergent #2
Publisher: Katherine Tegan Books
Date: May 2012
How did I get this book? purchased
My Rating: 3 of 5 stars
GoodReads | Author | Publisher

I dove right into this one after finishing Divergent. I was planning to start a completely different book first, but I just couldn't resist continuing. This one took me a bit longer to read because my real-life schedule got in the way (what are these plan things that interfere with my reading time?!) I didn't like it quite as much as Divergent, but it was a solid sequel. Tris's character was starting to irritate me because so much of the major conflict hinged on her either lying or withholding the truth. I hated how Tris and Four who seemed to be such a good match and such a good team in the first book, couldn't manage to work together most of the time -- it may be more realistic (to a point), but it was getting tiresome. I loved the ending though and it left me completely intrigued about how this trilogy will end.

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Allegiant
Series? yes; Divergent #3
Publisher: Katherine Tegan Books
Date: October 2013
How did I get this book? purchased
My Rating: 3 of 5 stars
GoodReads | Author | Publisher

Well, there continued to be some issues with Tris & Four not working together, but thankfully they eventually got their shit together. I totally get why some people hate how this series ends, but I have to give Veronica Roth some major props for having the guts to write an ending she must have known a lot of fans would not be happy with. The ending makes sense. The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that if the ending were different, it would have been totally wrong for the storyline. It does the story justice, even if it's not the happy ending we might have wanted. Cryptic enough? I hope so, because I'm not trying to give anything away just in case Christy and I are, in fact, not the last people on earth to have read this series.

In my opinion, the greatest weakness of Allegiant is the sheer volume of new information (and alterations to information I thought I already knew) in the first half. It felt like Roth saved way to much for the final book and it honestly made me wonder if this was always intended as a series or not. To me, it felt like she was frantically cobbling together elaborate explanations for the world outside Chicago that could have been more slowly introduced throughout the earlier books. It felt like it took me forever to "get" what the end goal was -- what the "good guys" were going to try to do to fix the problems of their society (as all #3's in dystopian trilogies tend to do...) Once I hit that stride, I couldn't put it down. For better or worse, the second half of this book was by far its greatest strength.

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Four: The Transfer
Series? yes; Divergent #0.1, novella
Publisher: Katherine Tegan Books
Date: September 2013
How did I get this book? purchased
My Rating: 4 of 5 stars
GoodReads | Author | Publisher

I absolutely love Four, especially in the first book, so I was super excited to read this novella in between the main books of the series. I loved learning more about his life before Dauntless since it really helped flesh out what I already knew about his character. You definitely don't have to read this novella, but if you like Four, I think you would enjoy it. There are three more coming out The Initiate, The Son, and The Traitor, but we have to wait until July for those :( Though at that time, they will all be collected in a print edition I can add to my collection :)

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Free Four: Tobias Tells the Divergent Knife-Throwing Scene
Series? yes; Divergent #1.5, short story
Publisher: Katherine Tegan Books
Date: August 2012
How did I get this book? purchased
My Rating: 4 of 5 stars
GoodReads | Author | Publisher

This was super-short and definitely worth reading for another perspective on a pivotal scene in the first book. At that point in Divergent, we don't know a whole lot about Four, so it was nice to get inside his head a bit. Again, if you're a fan of Four, I'd recommend checking it out -- you can read it in no time flat (says the slow reader!)

_____________
Reading Challenges:
Rewind
New Author
Book to Movie
Chunkster
Prequel & Sequel: 16 points
Lucky No. 14: Blame it on the Bloggers & Chunky Brick

15 comments:

  1. I love that you two are reading and review the books together. (Jealous she is a fast reader too!) I only read your review of Divergent and The Transfer since I read both of those already and I agree with your review 100%. I loved The Transfer and I am glad I read it . I think the fact there is no love triangle was a huge plus for me. HUGE!!! Looking froward to finishing the series even though I have heard no so good reviews about Book #3.

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    1. Thanks! This was a lot of fun to do. The completely non-spoilery version of my book #3 review is that there were things I liked & things I didn't like, BUT the thing most everyone else hates was not the problem for me at all. Definitely worth continuing if only to see for yourself!

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    2. "...there were things I liked & things I didn't like, BUT the thing most everyone else hates was not the problem for me at all."

      That's pretty much my reaction as well. I thought the series started strong but didn't quite live up to the promise of the first book. At least not for me.

      (But yes, SO refreshing to not have a love triangle... although I would have liked it better without any romance at all.)

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    3. I would definitely agree that #1 seemed to show a lot more potential for the rest of the series and it never quite lived up to it. And as much as I did like Tris & Four together in book one, they annoyed me in later books. I thought it was redeemed by the end, but so frustrating throughout the middle!

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  2. I love that "No love triangle" was on the list for you because that totally escaped me. Yes, that is a nice aspect though! I can't even imagine how much I would have hated books 2 and 3 if there was some love triangle BS thrown in, lol. But I totally agree that the second half of book 3 is what saved the series for me. Throughout all of the things that I didn't like, the ending made sense.

    Then again, I will staunchly defend Mockingjay as the ending that makes sense to everyone I meet, no matter how much they whine that it sucks.

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    1. The no love triangle really was a highlight for me. I don't mind romance in these kinds of books, but the love triangle thing is getting so old. I mean, really, how many teenagers really have 2 guys fighting over them? Usually if two guys like a girl at that age at least one of them is too chicken shit to say/do anything about it!

      And you're right, Mockingjay's ending also made sense. It may not have been what everyone wanted, but what everyone wanted probably would have been unrealistic.

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  3. I agree that I actually liked the ending of this book. The author definitely has a pair and I think it was a solid ending. It gave the series some finality and I loved that.

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    1. It was quite powerful, I think, even if it wasn't a happy ending (or perhaps because it wasn't a happy ending. Definitely not open-ended, but I do appreciate!

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  4. I really wish that I felt the way I did about Divergent with all the books, but I still do cherish this series!
    Missie @ A Flurry of Ponderings

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    1. It's hard to know what to make a series if you like parts of it so much better than others. For me, I think I would re-read the first, but probably not the others.

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  5. It makes me smile to see that you finally read this trilogy! I was the same way...Divergent was definitely my favorite out of them all. The second book was hard for me to read since Tris struggled so much, and I understand why, but still. Do you love Four?! I love Four. lol I have yet to read the novellas but I really should. So which faction do you think you would be in? I would be in Candor...I'm not brave enough to be in dauntless. :/

    Oh and the ending....I cried...I screamed....I got pissed...I was in denial... but after a week of really processing the end of Allegient...I understood why Roth did it, it worked, and it took guts for author and character. In the end, it felt okay. I still didn't like all the info dumping and stuff in the last book though.

    I think I'm done, for now. :)

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    1. I knew you'd be happy I finally read them Kay! I love Four SO much and can't wait for the rest of his novellas to come out this summer (only the one is available now). I would NOT be a Dauntless that is for sure -- I think the bookworm in me would probably push me toward Erudite, though they don't have the best reputation of the factions! We took a quiz at the book discussion group I also went to at the library for this book (double book club!) and I was a little bit of everything EXCEPT Dauntless -- so not surprised there! The info-dump was SO irritating. I'm glad you came to grips with the ending though -- not what any of us wanted, but it definitely made a lot of sense.

      OK, I think I'm done now :)

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    2. You don't ever have to be done talking about Divergent, or more specifically Four. hahaha :) I so wish he was real.

      I'm glad I'm not alone about Dauntless. I feel like everyone wants to be Dauntless, and I'm always like..."Yea, there is no way I could jump on and off a moving train." I would maybe try, but my clumsiness if not my fear would make me fail. haha

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  6. I haven't read the novellas and I bought Allegiant on release day but keep shuffling it around my tbr pile. I loved Four and the concept of divergents.

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    1. I hope you get to Allegiant! I had my gripes with it, but it does wrap things up (eventually) and I'd be very curious to see what you think of it! The novellas that are currently available were great -- I love squeezing short reads like those in :)

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I'd love to hear what you think :)